Being a self-admitted internet smart-mark dork who long ago tired of Triple H and never warmed up to John Cena's schtick, I must concede defeat and admit they both got big pops, Cena's pop coming just from a few second cameo on a Tribute To The Troops montage during a commercial break. I personally don't get it, and one could argue that if anyone is pushed that hard for that long people will eventually cheer for them, but I can't deny that they are very over with the crowd.

HBK got quite the pop, too, but a clean loss to Kennedy last week and placement on a lower spot in the card this week seemed to illustrate to everyone not to give him that main event pop he must be accustomed to. Also, not sure if this made it to tv, but when Kennedy came on the screen, there was a VCR-display-type logo running across the bottom of the screen with a timestamp on it, making it kind of obvious that it was a pre-tape. I found that odd for such an otherwise top-notch production. Looked like somebody was asleep at the wheel for that one.

That midget battle royal is the kind of thing I'd normally groan at watching from my couch, but I really did enjoy it live; I'm not sure if it was because I got swept up in the live experience of if it or because I really was expecting Kennedy, Mankind, and Batista to come out and got a laugh when it was the midgets instead. My buddy told me he was bummed that the real three people didn't make an appearance, so take that as you will. It seemed better than the usual Hornswaggle nonsense, especially that lame Road Runner running-through-the black-hole-painted-in-the-wall garbage from a few weeks back. I especially got a laugh from mini-Batista doing the Ultimate Warrior rope-shake on the second rope. Finlay got a pretty good pop coming out to beat up Khali.

Much like Bruce Mitchell in Greensboro, I mainly came out for this to get my last opportunity to see Ric Flair wrestle live. He got a great pop during his entrance and a pretty good pop after his win, but I was disappointed at how short and uneventful it turned out to be, and it seemed like the crowd wouldn't get much more into it because they knew the storyline wasn't going to end like this, not to mention Ric didn't get to cut any promo, even of the lame 21st-century WWE scripted variety.

The crowd definitely woke up more for the main event. Hardy chants were going like crazy. That sick bump at the end looked off the charts from where I was. When he climbed up to that first level, I thought to myself, yeah this will look good. When he climbed up higher, I thought there's no damn way he's going to do it from there. But then he did, and the crowd went nuts. They did a good job selling a long stretcher job for both buys afterwards, I would imagine well after the live feed to USA cut off. Jeff raised his arm in victory from the stretcher for one last pop.